After six years of development, the American Concrete Institute (ACI) recently released the 2014 update of the 519-page “American Concrete Institute’s Building Code Requirements for Structural Concrete (ACI 318-14).” This is the first major overhaul of the standard since 1969, according to Engineering News-Record (ENR).
The new code will be easier to use, and help ensure greater overall consistency and accuracy in designs, says Rick Stone, Madison Concrete Construction’s in-house engineer, who attended ACI’s Convention in October, where this important document made it’s official debut.
The code was reorganized to distill the complex relationships of physical behaviors in materials and forces into compartmentalized design elements of a building. In real-world scenarios, once the overall structural system for a building has been determined, a designer considers the structure one piece at a time. The new code provides design requirements for structural systems in chapters that are devoted to individual subjects such as slabs, foundations, columns, beams, etc., instead of various design requirements being scattered throughout the publication.
It is now organized from the designer’s perspective and contains more tables and charts, has a consistent structure for each member chapters and fewer cross references.
There is also a dedicated chapter that consolidates construction requirements as well as new chapters that address specific elements and structural systems. Maintaining an efficient focus on the design requirements and procedures for a given element, desired or needed changes can be more easily tracked through the process without losing sight of the net result.
The biggest impact that 318-14 will have on the general industry is ensuring that key elements of a design are not overlooked.
The code provides more consistency – as well as assurance that all features of the design process are identified and easily referenced in logical succession – that will improve the relationship of that element to the meticulous code requirements that have been developed.
A downloadable PDF explaining the Reorganized ACI 318-14 Code: Benefits, Rationale and availability more in depth is accessible here.
We look forward to hearing how your structural engineering challenges and successes and how the revised code may play a role in the future.
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